 I'm gonna tell you the story of Candido, an indigenous leader, this is not his real name, from the fictitious but very real country I'm going to call Forestopia. I'm gonna tell the story of indigenous land titling in four parts, from the types of rights granted to the implementation of the process, to the granting of the title, and to the outcomes for indigenous communities. Candido's in his fifties, and he's been a member of indigenous organizations in his community since he was a child, working for their land rights. He became a leader in the community, he joined the Federation of Indigenous Communities in his country and then took the struggle to the international level as well. Scene one, the content of the rights granted. Candido's organization joined with representatives of many other indigenous organizations internationally to pressure their governments to pass constitutional amendments recognizing indigenous rights and including the right to their ancestral land claims. They took their case to the international courts and to the United Nations, and they were very successful. 22 countries have signed ILO Convention 169, which recognizes the rights to indigenous rights to ancestral land, and over 140 countries have voted for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Because of his organization's success, Forestopia started getting a lot of attention. So the forest administration started creating new categories to recognize indigenous lands. The state forestry authority created community forest contracts, community forestry concessions, co-management regimes, the environment ministry created a new category called community protected areas and another one called extractive reserves. None of these mechanisms, however, actually grants long-term rights or recognizes ancestral or customary claims. Candido's community was sought out by the state forestry authority to offer them a community forestry contract. This would grant them temporary rights for 20 years over a part of the land that they claim. All they have to do is hire a forester to do their management plan, pay the fees, fill out the application, unfortunately this costs several thousand dollars, takes about 100 pages to fill out and takes about two years. Candido argues with other community leaders that accepting this kind of contract would make it more difficult for them to get their land title to their community because it would accept the forestry agency's authority as the legitimate authority over what they consider their historic lands. The leaders agree. So they threatened to take their government to the international court. For the sake of brevity, we need a little bit of magic here. The government, let's say they give in, they decide this is not a complicated process, the government decides they passed the laws and the legislature, they're going to recognize community lands, they create the rules and regulations for doing this, little bit of magic, but we move on to scene two, getting the process implemented. Candido's community applies for recognition and for title. First they have to prove that they're still an indigenous community, which fortunately because the majority of the community still speaks their native language, this isn't a complicated process. But they need to deal with a few problems inside their claim. Two present communities have settled inside their claim. As well, there's an individual, wealthy investor who has a title to a land inside the area they've claimed. There's also a logging concession and various other people living there. So they approach Mr. IM bureaucrat from the state land agency who says, sorry, we don't have the budget, the personnel or the capacity to deal with all of these problems. After six months he reports that the legal office says, actually you need to deal with the office of national delays because they're the ones in charge of demarcation and don't forget to send in your soil samples because they need to go to the national soil administration which is the one that in their lab is going to decide what the actual vocation of the land is. Finally a national NGO agrees to help them with demarcation. The state land agency declares a temporary moratorium on all land sales while demarcation continues and this releases a massive resource grab. A group of loggers in Cahoots with a village leader starts logging in one side of the territory and taking 50 to 75% of the trees. The community members see this happening and say, oh my God, we better get involved or there's gonna be nothing left for us. At the same time the government approves the private land owner's title because it did pre-exist the claim but seven of his other friends plus four military leaders have also showed up at this land office with fake signatures on witness documents saying that their land purchases also occurred prior to the moratorium. Scene three, the granting of the right. Candidate's village finally receives the title, the president shows up to hand over the title, gets on all the covers of the newspapers but the title turns out to be only for 25% of the area originally claimed. Relatives and friends of those settlers already living there are arriving on a daily basis and no politician in Forestopia wants to lose the votes that he fears he would lose to take on solving all of these problems. Scene four, Candidate travels home after months of trying to fight these issues in the capital and he finds the forests are dwindling, the settlers are defending their rights with armed guards, the company has started mining in the territory and the community's divided over those who want the jobs from the mining concession and those who feel they should not accept that because of the ecological risks. Candidate files a petition to the international court to change the name of his country from Forestopia to Forest dystopia. Scene four has been conducting research on land reforms for about a decade now. Since the 80s, governments in Latin America, Asia and Africa have begun to recognize community land rights in different ways but with a lot of the problems that I've presented here and many, many others that I didn't have time for. Opposition to community rights comes from those who want those resources and lands for themselves as well as those who see different vision of national development that think that giving lands to indigenous territories for example would interfere with that vision as well as from conservationists who fear that local people will destroy forests. Tenure security is a problem before, during and after reforms. Before reforms, what kinds of rights are going to be granted, who gets the rights and how can those rights be exercised and protected over the long term. Global witness reports that between 2002 and 2013, 908 people were murdered in their defense of environment or land issues with Brazil accounting for half of those murders followed by Honduras and the Philippines. Tenure security is not guaranteed by certifying registering or titling community lands though it may be part of helping resolve some of these problems. Finally what happens in practice depends on the role of the state and particularly individuals within the state. The state is not monolithic but there are key people who are often in the minority trying to make change. It also depends on collective action and support networks with NGOs and donors. Our current research is aimed at helping understand many of these multifaceted problems and on working with multiple actors to build capacity from the community level through the implementers to the policymakers at multiple scales. Thank you.